What math equations and properties should engineers be more aware of?

Question

There must be some very helpful math formulas, properties, etc that would benefit software engineers in their day to day. Two potential areas of improvement is doing probability analysis and setting alarm thresholds.Please share some math related things that you've found to be very helpful with work in the past.

gwmnxnp_516a · Accepted Answer

It depends pretty much on your field. If your field is related to games, formulas related to quaternions, linear algebra and coordinates will be useful; if your field is related to data science or machine learning, then, statistics, linear algebra, tensors and optimization will be useful as well. Obviously some types of programming requires more math than others, a robotic-related programming certainly will require far more math than a vanilla crud application.

Kibae · Answer

The most recent one I can think of that I've used is random sampling.
When I started thinking of potential customers I found a list of n potential users. I could have started by reaching out from #1 then worked down. But this would not have been representative of my potential user base.
So I picked a random number from 1 to n and reached out to that customer. Then picked another random number, and so on.
This ended up being more representative of my potential market.

giantg2 · Answer

Basic stats and basic vocab/terms. The most basic stats related stuff is used pretty often and sometimes it's misunderstood (median vs mean). If you know basic terms, you can look up appropriate algorithms.

airbreather · Answer

the area enclosed by a simple closed curve is the determinant of the co-ordinates in order (including the last pair being the same as the first pair to close it) divided by -2, the answer will be positive clockwise and negative anti-clockwise
the clockwise/anti clockwise is very handy as it allows an annulus to be excised from an area bounded by another simple closed curve
if, from the enclosing curve, you go into the annulus and out again on a co-incident line then this is zero area and you can take the determinant all in one hit and get areas of complex combinations of shapes.
this is extremely handy in so many ways, eg "is this point in side this shape?" - add the point into the co-ord list and see if the area increases or decreases
you need to be a little clever where you put the point in the order of the coord list, good start is to find two nearest consecutive neighbours

itake · Answer

My most commonly used math functions are (in no particular order):- Average- Medium- Max / Min- Length/Count- Add / Increment- Subtract / Decrement

quickthrower2 · Answer

I rarely do maths work but if I do it&rsquo;s in rendering something for example a PDF and in that case matrix algebra familiarity is useful.

_448 · Answer

Apart from equations or properties, at the core you need understanding of mathematical induction and discrete maths.

dyingkneepad · Answer

- Student's t-test

What math equations and properties should engineers be more aware of?

Basic stats and basic vocab/terms. The most basic stats related stuff is used pretty often and sometimes it's misunderstood (median vs mean). If you know basic terms, you can look up appropriate algorithms.

My most commonly used math functions are (in no particular order):
- Average
- Medium
- Max / Min
- Length/Count
- Add / Increment
- Subtract / Decrement

I rarely do maths work but if I do it’s in rendering something for example a PDF and in that case matrix algebra familiarity is useful.

Apart from equations or properties, at the core you need understanding of mathematical induction and discrete maths.

- Student's t-test